| Jesus and the End-Time Israel and The End-Time The Universal Gospel |
Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified.Perhaps the toughest problem to be dealt with in this interpretation is the role of Israel in the end-time. What part do they play? What part will they play? It is clearly a New Testament problem. The role of Israel as the people of God can be traced without difficulty through the Old Testament; they came into being at the call of Abraham; their line continued through Jacob and his twelve sons; they became a great nation under Moses and a great kingdom under David; they went into exile in Babylon, and when they returned to their land they lived through a difficult and long period, through oppressions and wars, up through the life of Jesus on earth and for some forty years more. There is no question through it all that Israel is the people of God. The appearance of Jesus and his establishment of the Kingdom through his death and resurrection marked the end of the Old Testament, but the identity of the people of God was even then not a problem. The Holy Spirit brought the Church into being on the day of Pentecost, but the people who there formed the Church were all Israelites; as God had before singled out individuals for particular blessing and service from among the people of God, so in the formation of the Church he did it again. Ultimately and decisively, perhaps, but still within Israel. Then the Holy Spirit did for Gentiles the very same work of grace that he had been doing for Jews. What about these Gentiles? Were they God's people? Could they be God's people without being Jews? The only known way for them to belong to the people of God was for them to become Jews as well as Christians; in the minds of many a Gentile disciple of the Messiah of Israel was an impossible contradiction in terms. Paul won the day against those who claimed it was necessary for the people of God to retain Jewish identity. Put Peter first enunciated in the Jerusalem Council the great principle by which the Church has lived ever since: Brethren, you know that in the early days God made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith. Now therefore why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which nether our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we shall be saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will (Acts 15:7-11).The people of God are those who are saved by grace, whiter they be Jews or Gentiles. The principle was not immediately accepted; Paul fought for it in nearly every city where he preached. But the battle was finally won, and near the end of their lives both Peter and Paul wrote glorious words about the unity of the people of God. Peter called the Church by names like "chosen race," royal priesthood," "holy nation," "God's own people" (1 Peter 2:9, 10), words which before would have applied only to Israel. Paul could say to the Romans, "there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him." And to the Ephesians he wrote the most explicit statement of the unity of the people of God in the whole Bible: Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands-remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:11-18).There is but one people of God. It comes into being in response to the universal Gospel proclaimed in Romans 10, with its grand conclusion: ""Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved." It is neither Jewish nor Gentile but a new people that transcends both; it fulfills the promises of God to Israel in the Old Testament, but it does not limit their fulfillment to Israel. Yet Israel is neither forsaken nor rejected. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Our chief problem with this New Testament understanding of the people of God is the existence of the modern state of Israel. Shortly after I became a Christian (in my early teens) I was taught that the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine was the clearest fulfillment of biblical prophecy in modern times. If that assumption were true, then Israel must still be in some sense "the people of God." Now there is no question that Israel, as a national group and as a nation, occupies a unique place in history. It demands and deserves our attention. It has continued through three thousand years, through exile and incredible persecution; its destiny and that of the land it occupies are irrevocably intertwined. But I do believe, in the light of the New Testament' teaching concerning the one people of God, that it is necessary to make a distinction between Israel as a nation and Israel as the people of God. Israel continues as a nation. It deserves all the rights and prerogatives of nationhood among the community of nations. But its role as the people of God ended on the day of Pentecost, when God poured out his Spirit upon all flesh. Then what about the sure word, so firmly proclaimed and so commonly accepted, that the establishment of the modern nation of Israel is a fulfillment of prophecy? There are three problems with it that to me are insurmountable. These have nothing to do with Israel's rights as a nation or her recurring identification with the land; but they all bear on the right of the Church, rather than the right of the nation of Israel, to be called the people of the end-time. First, the prophecy of the return of Israel to the land is absent from the New Testament. To make the fig tree in Matthew 24 a symbol for Israel is to inject into the text a meaning that simply is not there. Even more significant, the return of Israel to the land is absent from Romans 9-11, which is the most detailed exposition of the role of Israel in the New Testament. Paul's concern is not for the earthly destiny of the nation, but for the spiritual salvation of the people. While arguments from silence are not conclusive, they do give us some clue as to what New Testament writers considered significant. Second, the promises in the Old Testament are cast in the language of the Old Covenant, the language of law and sacrifice. For them to be fulfilled in their own terms the temple sacrifices and the Old Testament law would have to be reinstated. Some Christians accept this on the grounds that "the Promises of God are irrevocable."1 But Paul did not. He asserted the opposite: "Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified." It is not fair to the prophets to say that their predictions are fulfilled only in literal detail. They were prophesying, in the most exalted language that they and their hearers could understand, of blessings that were the greatest they could conceive under the limitation of the Old Covenant. Fulfillment demanded only that God could not do less than the prophets promised; there was surely nothing preventing him from doing more than they promised. And he did so much more in Christ, so much that could not even be conceived of until the Son of God came in the flesh to make it known, that it did not occur to the apostles (after Pentecost) to be disappointed when they finally realized that God intended much more for the e world than the earthly blessing of Israel. "To be saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," to quote Peter, was more than enough fulfillment for anyone. Third, to see the establishment of Israel in the land as a necessary prelude to a 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth, as described in Revelation 20, is speculative. Israel is not mentioned in that chapter, so it is an open question whether John intended the 1,000 years to be the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, or, if he did, whether he believed that Israel had any more significance in the fulfillment than the whole of God's people. Further, Jerusalem and the land of Israel are not mentioned s the place of the 1,000-year reign. Whatever the meaning of the 1,000-years are filled with rituals belonging to the old covenant, pasted into the text by those who "divide the word of truth."2 What about Israel, then, if God has sent a Gospel for all men, a universal Gospel not limited to Israel? What about Israel, if God is creating and forming a people for himself out of those who hear and obey this Gospel, who are "saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ"? Paul wrote Romans 9-11 out of his anguish for the people of Israel: For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race. They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. God who is over all is blessed forever. Amen (Romans 9:3-5).In chapter 10 he repeats his concern. "Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved." God obviously is not interested in leaving anyone out. But we must not say too much. Since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, then we must not make distinctions. Since the same Lord is Lord of all, then we can trust him to be moved by his love for all men and not to continue the outgrown system of the old covenant simply because, as one book declares, "Prophecy demands it." (Prophecy doesn't demand it at all; a particular system of interpretation demands it.3) Since Christ is the end of the law for all that are justified, we will build our discussion on that assumption. 1 C.C. Ryrie, op cit., pp. 101-103, demonstrates how this argument works by citing Acts 15:14-17 as a "proof' that God will rebuild the Davidic kingdom. The passage in question is a quotation by James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, of Amos 9:11-12. It shows that the purpose of God in raising up Israel is to reach the Gentiles also. But Ryrie fails to point out that James is speaking in support of Peter; a reference to a future earthly kingdom would have been irrelevant to his point. To be sure, James may not be taking Amos literally, but then many New Testament references to the Old Testament are not very literal. My point is that the Amos quotation as James used it demonstrates the very opposite of Ryrie's intent. (After wrestling with this question I was pleased to discover that N.W. Lund followed the same argument that I have used here. N.W. Lund, Israel and the Church, translated from the Swedish by J. Eldon Johnson, Unpublished Manuscript in the Covenant Archives, Chicago, p. 80.) 2 The 1,000-year reign of Christ (often referred to as the Millennium) is unexplained in the book of Revelation itself, though extra-biblical explanations abound. My personal view is that the 1,000 years serves, within the scheme of Revelation, to show that "the kingdom of the world" really does "become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ." To tie the 1,000 years to historical, calendar time makes no more sense to me than making the whore of Babylon an historical woman or the battle of Michael and Satan into an historical conflict between angelic beings. My view does not rule out an historical millennium but to say it must occur is another matter. The Millennium has been used as a point of reference for interpretation of the end-time. I suggest that a much more significant point of reference is Jesus himself. Hence the title of this book. 3 Lindsey, op cit., p. 56 » Next Page — The Remnant » Table of Contents » Home |